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Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Who knew one space, 72" wide, and 88" long, could occupy so much freaking time? Well, I'm almost done.

But it's not really the space. It's what it contains. I can't even tell you how many metaphors I have found in cleaning this damned closet. Well, it's not damned any more. And in the meantime, I found incredible things.

Some incredibly painful. Some incredibly boring. Some really nice.

But I think the big one this week is a letter I never sent to my father-in-law. It was too heartbreaking.
He was going to relieve me for part of a week while I went to go visit my sister, get a break. Caregiving. Because we couldn't trust my husband not to go under a surgeon's knife, or to be seizure-free, or to buy $10,0000.00 worth of home repair, or, you name it.

In the letter, I wrote that my husband said to me, very happily, as if it was a visit to a carnival.
"Yeah, if you leave me, you won't know if I'll be dead before you get back!!!!"

It's beyond explanation. Did he want me to feel guilty for leaving? Did he want me to be happy? Was he assessing risk? Was he playing? Scared? Did he want to die? Every last one of those. Every last one, and other things he meant that I can't know.

The world is so big and so full of infinite possibilities. Those include the possibilities for infinite crap.

What I have learned from my closet: my life was sick and twisted and I took care and paid attention. I got so much unusual information. It changed me forever. It's no wonder that I have been heartsick and twisted up.

So maybe I forgive myself a little. Maybe I understand more. Maybe I save that letter, next to all the love letters and cards my husband wrote me, when he was not sick. I have a bunch of them. They are all true.

I also have some things from my Mom's place when she passed, and I've been avoiding going through some of it like the plague.(and that's been since 1998)Perhaps, with your story, I've come a bit closer to facing the inevitable. Gathering the courage is the hardest.